For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.

Friday, March 31, 2017

...Jon Donnison’s 2013 article is still available online. In light of the stance taken by the marathon’s organisers and BDS supporters, the BBC clearly needs to rethink its promotion of the event as having “nothing to do with politics”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
31 March '17..

Four years ago the BBC’s Jon Donnison (who was based in the region at the time) promoted a marathon run in the PA controlled territories as a ‘non-political’ event – despite very clear evidence to the contrary.

“The Israelis should look at this purely as a sporting event. It has nothing to do with politics,” says Samia al-Wazir, the spokeswoman for the Palestinian Olympic Committee.” [emphasis added]

This year that marathon is taking place on March 31st and British comedian (and marathon runner) Eddie Izzard had planned to take part.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...No responsible Israeli leader could have made any real peace with Mahmoud Abbas. Everyone who is honest with themselves know this. And Abbas has ensured that the next few generations of Palestinian leaders will be just as bad. That will be his legacy.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 March '17..

Mahmoud Abbas' 82nd birthday was March 26.

We hear often that Israel has to make peace with Abbas because he is the most moderate leader the Palestinians ever had.

Even if that is true, what do these people anticipate will happen when Abbas is dead? That the Islamists who replace him would keep whatever agreement he supposedly would make?

Peace cannot be made with a person (and Abbas is the least charismatic person around.) Peace must be made between peoples, and Abu Mazen has ensured that his people will never want true peace with Israel.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

...You won’t read Ghanam’s remarks in The Washington Post or hear them quoted on CNN. That would remind the American public that Palestinian leaders support burning Jews to death, and publicly lie to cover for the would-be killers. And that would undermine the campaign to give the firebomb-throwers a sovereign state in Israel’s backyard.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
29 March '17..

A group of Palestinians tried to burn some Israeli Jews to death March 23. Just another day in the Middle East.

The four attackers drove up to the perimeter of the Jewish community of Beit El, north of Jerusalem, and began hurling firebombs toward homes there. A firebomb, also known as a Molotov cocktail, is of course a deadly weapon. It explodes on impact and unleashes a torrent of flames. We can all easily imagine what would happen if those firebombs had struck people or homes.

Fortunately, Israeli soldiers immediately fired at the would-be murderers, killing one and wounding three others. That should be the end of the story. But it won’t be. Here’s why.

To begin with, one of the terrorists was 17 years old. That means “human rights” groups will add him to their list of “Palestinian children killed by Israelis.” Even if a killer is just one day shy of his 18th birthday, that’s good enough to define him as a “child” in the eyes of those who want to smear Israel.

The fact that a Palestinian died, while no Israelis were burned to death as he had intended, meant that many news outlets portrayed the attacker as the victim.

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Where else but on the pages of the New York Times would such illogical and twisted views find such a welcoming home?

Ricki Hollander..
CAMERA Snapshots..
28 March '17..

On August 18, 2011, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out near Eilat by four groups of Islamic terrorists that included Palestinians and Egyptians. Six civilians were murdered, as well as a soldier and police officer who had come to assist the victims and 31 were wounded. Three days later, after returning home from a vacation abroad, Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner wrote a column on his blog justifying Palestinian terrorism. He began:

I think a lot of people who realize that the occupation is wrong also realize that the Palestinians have the right to resist it; to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis, especially when Israel is showing zero willingness to end the occupation, which has been the case since the Netanyahu government took over (among other times in the past).

And later:

... the Palestinians, like every nation living under hostile rule, have the right to fight back, that their terrorism, especially in the face of a rejectionist Israeli government, is justified......Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack. They had the same right to fight for their freedom as any other unfree nation in history ever had. And just like every harsh, unjust government in history bears the blame for the deaths of its own people at the hands of rebels, so Israel, which rules the Palestinians harshly and unjustly, is to blame for those eight Israeli deaths...

Even though Derfner acknowledged at the time that his own justification of terrorism could be used by other terrorists as encouragement -- "The possibility that Israel’s enemies could use my or anybody else’s justification of terror for their campaign is a daunting one; I wouldn’t like to see this column quoted on a pro-Hamas website, and I realize it could happen" -- it did not stop him. Apparently overcome by his own moral rightness, he felt he just had to show those Israelis that it was really them who were "compelling [Palestinians] to engage in terrorism", and "that the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on [Israeli] hands." Derfner's readers and his employers at the Jerusalem Postwere not quite as taken by the righteousness of his terror justification, and he was fired from his post at the newspaper.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

...Moreover, along with Hamas, Abbas and his PA plan to continue inculcating Palestinian children with the idea that they should look to terrorists who kill Jews as their role models.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
29 March '17..

In an ironic turnaround, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) is now the object of intimidation and threats made by many Palestinians.

UNRWA is reportedly planning to introduce some changes to the curriculum in its schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians are rather unhappy about it. They claim that UNRWA has "succumbed" to Israeli pressure to make the changes.

The proposed changes are based on leaks to Palestinians and have not been confirmed by UNRWA. Palestinians claim that they learned about the plans to introduce the changes during meetings with senior UNRWA officials.

According to the Palestinians, the changes are intended to "eradicate" their "national identity" and "history" and distort their "struggle" against Israel.

The Palestinians claim that the new textbooks have replaced the map of "historic Palestine" (including Israel) with pictures of a pumpkin and a bird. Palestinian textbooks often feature maps of "historic Palestine" without Israel. Cities inside Israel, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias and Ramle, are referred to as "Palestinian cities." The Palestinian Authority (PA) media also refer to these cities as "Palestinian cities inside the 1948 Land."

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Despite an extensive search, we have to date been unable to locate even one BBC report on that UK government statement across the wide variety of BBC platforms.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
28 March '17..

A former BBC anchor once described the corporation’s approach to the United Nations as follows:

“Whatever the United Nations is associated with is good — it is heresy to question any of its activities. The EU is also a good thing, but not quite as good as the UN.”

As has been documented here on numerous occasions over the years, in spite of its ‘public purposes’ remit, the BBC has continuously failed to provide its audiences with information that would enhance their understanding of anti-Israel bias at UN bodies such as the Human Rights Council and UNESCO. Rather, the corporation has found fit to provide uncritical amplification for assorted predetermined reports and resolutions.

Last week, as the UNHRC went about its usual business of passing anti-Israel resolutions, something rather unusual happened.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Thanks to the “Zionist enemy” – which does not have the death penalty and so values the life of each of its citizens that it exchanged more than 1,000 murderers for Schalit — Tamimi has been a free woman since the age of 30. And thanks to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with the “Zionist entity” in 1994, Tamimi will continue to enjoy state protection to preach jihad and martyrdom against the Jews. Let her story, and that of Israeli policy, be a lesson – and a warning.

Ruthie Blum..
Algemeiner.com..
28 March '17..

In October, 2011, a female Palestinian terrorist named Ahlam Tamimi – who had assisted in the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem 10 years earlier – was released from an Israeli prison and shortly thereafter immigrated to Jordan.

Though, in 2003, she received 16 consecutive life sentences for her accompanying Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri to the bustling fast-food restaurant in the center of Israel’s capital — where he blew himself up, killing 15 innocent Israelis and tourists (among them seven children and a pregnant woman) and wounding another 130 — Tamimi was freed in what came to be called the “Schalit deal.”

For more than five years, beginning in 2006, Israel had been engaged in fruitless diplomatic and military efforts to force the terrorist organization Hamas to return abducted IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit from captivity in Gaza. Fearing that the young man’s time was running out – and helpless in the face of mass public pressure by Schalit’s parents and the public, the Israeli government ultimately agreed to the demand of the jihadists calling the shots. This involved exchanging 1,027 mostly Palestinian terrorists for the single soldier.

Two hundred and eighty of these terrorist prisoners had been incarcerated for carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis; Hamas operative Tamimi was prominent among them. Nor was she notorious in Israel alone. Since two American citizens had been victims of the Sbarro carnage, Tamimi was also known in the United States.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

...These payments are codified in Palestinian law, which dictates that the deadlier an attack, the richer the reward. Payments equaled $315 million last year, or 8% of the PA budget. Beneficiaries include the family of Bashar Masalha, who last year stabbed 11 people near Tel Aviv and killed 28-year-old Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran visiting Israel on a break from business school. Police killed Masalha, but his relatives now receive monthly payments equal to several times the average Palestinian wage. With special offices and more than 500 civil servants dedicated to disbursing these funds, the PA’s message is clear: Terrorism pays.

Each one a convicted murderer, the Tamimi couple (photographed last weekin their home) live in comfort and style today in Amman, Jordan, a lifestylefunded to a significant extent by the Palestinian Authority's Pay-to-Slay(Rewards for Terror) payment scheme. Though most don't realize it, a largepercentage of our blog's readers finance this through their taxes.[Image Source: Al Jazeera]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
28 March '17..

An editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal mentions the obscenely fat payments ("several times the average Palestinian wage") made monthly by the Mahmoud Abbas regime to the family of a now-deceased Palestinian Arab terrorist thug.

The circumstances behind those payments ought to be better known than they are: the money flows specifically because the knife-man murdered a young US vet who happened to be jogging on Tel Aviv's sea shore a year ago.

There are thousands of similar such recipients. Every single month. Eight percent of the entire PA budget is devoted to the payment of what the PA insists be called "salaries", not welfare payments. The Abbas regime is chronically unable to meet its financial obligations but reiterates over and again [source] that the payments we're talking about will not be cut back. Who says they have no principles?

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

If a Palestinian is persecuted, raped or murdered in the forest and no Jews are around, did it happen?

Mitchell Bard..
Algemeiner.com..
27 March '17..

On college campuses and beyond, support for the Palestinians has been portrayed as a human rights campaign. While the antisemitic BDS movement is — according to its founders and leaders — a crusade to make Israel disappear, it has attracted many naïve supporters who believe ostracizing Israel will somehow help the Palestinians achieve independence. BDS has been an unmitigated failure, but it has shielded the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas from criticism for their human rights abuses.

Sadly, the people who loudly proclaim their concern for the Palestinians are silent when it comes to how Palestinians treat each other. The “occupation” imposes limitations on the freedom of Palestinians, but Israelis have no responsibility for the denial of civil rights that the residents of the West Bank and Gaza suffer on a daily basis.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...This is not the first time that BBC Arabic has portrayed Israeli victims of terror attacks to its audiences as “Jewish settlers” regardless of their ethnicity and place of residence.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
27 March '17..

On the morning of August 4th 2002 a terror attack took place on a bus travelling to Tsfat. Nine people died and some 40 were wounded in that suicide bombing near Meron Junction. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, which was reported by the BBC at the time.

Among those murdered in that attack were two foreign nationals from the Philippines, two members of the Galilee Druze communities of Sajur and Maghar, a resident of Ramat Beit Shemesh and residents of the Galilee towns and villages Karmiel, Safsufa, Mitzpe Adi and Mitzpe Aviv.

Following the attack Israeli forces arrested Hamas commander Mazen Fuqaha, who was responsible for dispatching the suicide bomber, in his home town of Tubas in Area A. In 2003 Fukha was sentenced to nine life sentences for his role in the attack. He was released from prison in 2011 as part of the Shalit deal prisoner exchange and deported to the Gaza Strip.

On March 24th 2017 Fuqaha was assassinated outside his home in Gaza City by unidentified gunmen.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

When actor Richard Gere came to Israel recently for the premiere of his film "Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer," he took the opportunity to go on a tour of Hebron led by left-wing group Breaking the Silence. During the tour, Gere said the situation in Hebron's city center "is exactly like what the Old South was in America."

As far as Gere is concerned, the tough security measures Israel takes on Martyrs Street (which should really be called Killers Street, as it is named for those who are responsible for the deaths of many Jews), are all one needs to know about the city and the conflict. Gere seems to believe Israel has its own version of apartheid because of one street where there are restrictions on the movement of Palestinians. Let's hope he was just being naive and was convinced by what Breaking the Silence wanted him to hear and see.

Gere was not given the proper context, nor did he receive a briefing on the killing of the city's Jews throughout history. He saw a manufactured reality, a fake reality. Nine hundred years ago, Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children for religious worship. Such libels have been used throughout history to incite the masses against the Jews and justify pogroms and systematic killings.

Today the Palestinians use the same tactics, spreading similar falsehoods.

...While the BBC is clearly aware of the effects of Hamas’ policy of augmented taxation on local residents and the terror group’s priority of military rehabilitation over social and economic issues, those topics continue to be under-reported even in direct coverage from the Gaza Strip.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
27 March '17..

In June 2016 the BBC Gaza bureau’s Rushdi Abualouf produced an article for the BBC News website titled “Gazans squeezed by triple taxes as Hamas replaces lost income“.

As was noted here at the time, Abualouf’s portrayal of Hamas’ “financial crisis” skimmed over the fact that the terror organisation’s prioritisation of rearmament and tunnel building plays a key role in the creation of economic and social pressures on ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. The BBC’s correspondent preferred to focus audience attentions elsewhere:

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...The entire dispatch doesn’t exactly engender confidence in the ability of the Times to cover this issue with accuracy, sophistication, or independent thinking. It’s a disappointment all too typical of Times reporting on this topic.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
26 March '17..

A New York Times article about discussions between Israel and the United States regarding settlements in the West Bank includes this paragraph:

Extracting a deal from Mr. Netanyahu in current circumstances would be tricky. The Israeli leader is politically more vulnerable than he was eight years ago, when Mr. Obama demanded that he freeze all construction.

“Eight years ago,” the prime minister of Israel was Ehud Olmert. Netanyahu was still assembling a coalition. Netanyahu wasn’t “the Israeli leader,” and it’s not at all clear he is more “vulnerable” now than he was then.

Nor is it clear that even if Mr. Netanyahu were indeed more vulnerable now that he was when he eventually became prime minister later in 2009, that would make him less likely now to freeze settlements. The Times seems to assume that freezing settlements is something that only a politically strong Israeli leader would do. But one can make the opposite case, as well, that only a strong prime minister would be able to risk a big public fight with an American president over settlements, and that a weak one would be more likely to cave to American pressure.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Haaretz reported that Israeli forces killed Basil al-Araj, "among the younger generation of Palestinian intellectual and leaders of the boycott movement." Haaretz didn't say that he was also identified as the head of a terror cell planning attacks.

Hanan Amiur/Tamar Sternthal..
Media Analyses..
26 March '17..

Palestinian Basil Al-Araj was buried last Thursday near Bethlehem.

Why was Al-Araj killed in the prime of his youth?

Haaretz readers who saw the article by Jack Khoury and Gili Cohen ("Palestinian teenager shot and killed by IDF forcces near Hebron") in the March 19 print edition, or March 18 online here, would understand that Israeli forces killed him because he supported the boycott of Israel and Palestinian security coordination with Israel.

As the online edition stated:

The two funerals took place a day after the funeral of Basil al-Araj. Araj was shot and killed by police special forces on March 6 in Al-Bireh after they surrounded the house in which he was hiding. Araj, who Israel defined as a wanted person, was among the leaders of the boycott movement in the West Bank, and called for an end to security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and his death led to protests against the PA. During the funeral hundreds called for revenge and an end to security cooperation with Israel.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Trump should know from his real estate experience that a deal is only possible when both sides think they are getting something that they want. But what the Palestinians want is something that Israel isn’t selling. It doesn’t matter how persuasive you are. It doesn’t matter what sweeteners one side or the other can throw in. It doesn’t matter how hard you push or what you threaten. Sometimes there just isn’t a deal.

Donald Trump likes deals. He likes the idea of brokering a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and thinks that he can do it. He can’t, and here’s why:

The insurmountable obstacle to a deal is that the essence of the Palestinian movement is the denial of a state belonging to the Jewish people (they don’t even agree that we are a people) in any part of the land between the river and the sea. Questions of borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian unity, and settlements – no matter how difficult – are all secondary to this major problem.

This is why the Palestinian understanding of “two state solution” includes a right of return to Israel for the descendents of Arab refugees, and why it does not include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, or a renunciation of their claim to all of the land. This is the Palestinian bottom line.

Israel is willing to make many compromises (including some that are extremely stupid and dangerous to our security) but we are not prepared to agree to disappear. This is the Israeli bottom line.

Neither side can go any lower.

Mahmoud Abbas understands this very well. This is why he correctly considers direct negotiations with Israel a waste of time. This is why he insists that PM Netanyahu does not accept the two state solution, because he understands that he and Netanyahu mean different things by that expression. This is why he favors getting the Europeans and the UN to force Israel to give him what he wants. He knows that deep down (or not so deep down) many of these elements believe there should not be a Jewish state and would be happy to see it disappear.

...A while back, people horrified by resolutions like this passed by the UCC and other mainline denominations hoped that "the people in the pews" would rise up and revolt in response, and insist that church assemblies tell a more honest story about the Arab-Israeli conflict to their denominations. This turned out to be fantasy. Some church members fought back against resolutions like this, but eventually, the people in the pews who disagreed with the falsehoods their national assemblies said about Israel and other issues of the day simply left their denominations, sometimes bringing their local churches with them.

Dexter Van Zile..
Gatestone Institute..
23 March '17..

The United Church of Christ (UCC), a liberal Protestant church with roots that go back to the Mayflower, is at it again. During the first few days of July 2017, the denomination's deliberative body, the General Synod, will gather in Baltimore Maryland. The General Synod will approve the denomination's budget and vote on some proposals that determine how the church's national bureaucracy will be reorganized. The synod will also vote on a number of resolutions that call on the denomination's officers and local churches to advocate for particular social causes that the assembly deems important.

There are 17 resolutions on the General Synod's agenda, one of which deals with Israel's treatment of Palestinian children in its detention centers. As of this writing, there are no resolutions on the agenda dealing with the massacre of huge numbers of people in Syria by the regime led by Bashar Al-Assad, who has killed hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims, many of them children, since the beginning of his country's civil war in 2011.

There might be some pushback within the denomination against the resolution, which portrays Israel as guilty of crimes against Palestinian children. There should be. The resolution, which was submitted by a number of churches located mostly in coastal "blue states" such as California, Oregon and Connecticut, makes no pretense of holding Palestinian leaders accountable even as it invokes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Palestinian Authority signed in 2014, to justify its condemnations of Israel.

In particular, the text makes no mention of the crimes against children perpetrated by Palestinian leaders in both the Gaza Strip and West Bank who teach children to hate, nor is there any reference to Hamas' tendency to put children in harm's way by using schools and hospitals as storage stations and launch pads for rocket attacks against Israel....

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

...If you don’t even know that beards interfere with gas masks, something every Israeli has been forced by hard necessity to learn, or if you see that fact as nothing but a “fascinating historical detail,” what makes you qualified to give advice to a country whose security challenges are so clearly outside your knowledge and experience?

A review of a comedy of manners set in England in the 1920s wouldn’t seem the obvious place to look to understand why the average Westerner really has no business trying to tell Israelis how to run their country. But two sentences in this New York Timesbook review encapsulate the problem perfectly: “Historical details, which abound, are often fascinating. (Who knew that beards interfere with gas masks?)”

I’m sure most New York Times readers don’t know that. But virtually every adult Israeli does, other than a few recent immigrants. That’s because almost every adult Israeli either has a gas mask or did at one time (mine still lives in my closet), and many of us have actually worn them. They were distributed nationwide before the 1991 Gulf War, out of fear that Saddam Hussein would put chemical warheads on the missiles he launched at Israel during the war. Israel, incidentally, was one of only two countries Saddam launched missiles at, even though it wasn’t one of the 39 countries actually waging war on Iraq at the time.

Since then, Israel has run several nationwide campaigns to get people to exchange their old gas masks for new ones. That gas masks have an expiration date is another fascinating “historical” detail most Westerners probably don’t know (the campaigns ended a few years ago, after the implosion of both Iraq and Syria reduced the risk of a chemical attack). Israel also passed a law requiring every new house to include a bomb shelter capable of doubling as a sealed room, since ordinary bomb shelters offer no protection against chemical attacks (yet another little-known “historical” detail). That’s one of many factors contributing to the country’s sky-high housing costs, but not one Israelis complain about. In-house bomb shelters are even more necessary today, given the thousands of rockets launched at Israel by both Hezbollah and Hamas over the last 10 to 15 years.

Even Israelis who were children in 1991 undoubtedly remember being woken by sirens in the middle of the night, rushing to makeshift sealed rooms (heavy-duty plastic wrap, tape and damp towels), putting on their masks and sitting for hours waiting for the all-clear. The adults also remember being unable to fall asleep at night while awaiting that siren. The chronic sleep deprivation experienced by people under missile bombardment is another little-known historical detail (somehow, it never seems to interest human rights organizations as much as the sleep deprivation of captured terrorists during interrogations).

Friday, March 24, 2017

...We tweeted yesterday about Al Jazeera's shameless tribute to an unrepentant killer of children. Addressing the reporter, Ali Younes, we wrote: "In the annals of sympathetic interviews with mass-murderers of children, this @Aljazeera_Newz #Tamimi piece takes "loathsome" to new lows." He hasn't bothered responding.

Tamimi is crowded by admirers at Amman airport on the day she was flown back to Jordan after being freed from Israeli prison in the 2011 Shalit Deal

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 March '17..

The following article was published by Al Jazeera in Arabic on Wednesday and in English yesterday (Thursday). It's an entirely uncritical account of a notably vicious convicted murderer's version of why she should be left alone and not have to face justice. The reporter does not challenge a single one of her claims.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Israel certainly does not reduce the flow of water to Palestinians in times of stress. One can only speculate that, apart from the hateful claims of anti-Israel propagandists, this assertion by MSN is similar to a story that was comprehensively debunked by HonestReporting in 2016.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
23 March '17..

MSN News (a Microsoft site) has compiled a photo slideshow of “Places around the world running out of water.” Unsurprisingly numerous Middle East countries feature with accompanying captions.

That Israel should be included is debatable given the fact that its water crisis has been alleviated thanks to desalination plants and effective water resource conservation. MSN News focuses only on the water level of the Lake Kinneret.

But how does MSN News explain or justify this?

The caption reads:

Israel reduces the flow of water to the country in times of stress. The crisis is further exaggerated during times of strife when water pipelines can get shelled and damaged. Israel also has discriminatory water-sharing agreements with Palestine.

Someone at MSN News has written a caption with some very serious libels. The allegations in the caption are false.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...The Beinart children may find themselves feeling like they’ve just stepped into Bizarro World. Everything their father taught them is the exact opposite of reality. Will they believe their eyes, or their prevaricating father? Beinart was right when he said that his kids will see “what it means to hold millions of people…without free movement or due process.” But it’s the PA, not Israel, that is depriving the Palestinians of things such as free movement and due process.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
22 March '17..

Israel critic Peter Beinart has announced that when his children “near adulthood, I’ll encourage them to visit the West Bank.” Why? “So they can see for themselves what it means to hold millions of people…without free movement or due process,” he wrote in his column for The Forward.

The Beinart children are in for quite a surprise.

In his various articles and media appearances, Papa Beinart regularly accuses Israel of occupying and oppressing the Palestinians. I imagine that’s what the Beinart kids hear at the dinner table, too.

But when the young Beinarts arrive in Judea and Samaria, they will discover that dear old dad wasn’t telling them the whole story. In fact, he wasn’t even telling them a small piece of the story.

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

...If a president (particularly one with an expired mandate) in any other location in the world had control over a shadowy fund that, among other things, facilitated the provision of rewards – and incentives – for terrorism, one can be pretty sure that the BBC’s journalistic curiosity would be piqued. However in the case of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, the BBC remains typically dumb.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
23 March '17..

As has been noted here before, the issue of the Palestinian Authority’s payment of salaries to convicted terrorists is a topic which is serially excluded from the view of BBC audiences.

That subject is obviously of interest to governments and tax payers alike in the many countries that donate aid to the Palestinian Authority – including of course the BBC’s funding British public. Familiarity with the issue is also key to understanding of both the eternal PA budget deficit and the background to Palestinian terrorism.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...To Mr. Netanyahu's credit, he had both the vision and the will to immediately address the challenge created by the injection of Russian forces into Syria. I shudder to think what the situation would be now if Prime Minister Netanyahu hadn't flown right away to Moscow when this mess began.

This Monday Syrian President Bashar Assad told Russian journalists that "I think Russia can play an important role...they can discuss the same issues with the Israelis...and they can play a role in order that Israel not attack Syria again in the
future."

There was speculation that our hands were tied.

But today Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to indicate that the opposite was the case.

When commenting on Israel’s recent air raids against targets in Syria, Lavrov declined to say that Russia had a problem with the Israeli operations.

Instead he noted that that during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow, the parties had confirmed agreements "concerning military cooperation between Russia and Israel in Syria."

And what did Lavrov have to say about an Israeli attack carried out after the Netanyahu-Putin meeting?

"We will judge by deeds and not by statements in order to figure out if our Israeli counterparts abide by these agreements."

...As I’ve written elsewhere, sometimes the most telling New York Times coverage of Israel comes not on the editorial page or the front page, but in the movie reviews.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
22 March '17..

A brief New York Times item appears online under the headline: “Israel’s Rich Culinary Legacy Revealed in a New Film.”

The article, about a documentary movie titled “In Search of Israeli Cuisine,” reports: “After watching this film, one has to conclude that with more than 100 nationalities living within the country’s borders, an Israeli cuisine resists easy definition.”

That seemed to me to be a strange sentence. It amounts to something of an assault on the proposition that the nationality of those living within Israel’s borders is, well, Israeli.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

...One can only wonder why he made this statement, as if there is one thing Israel's governments have focused on more than any other issue, it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This topic has also been the primary focus of public discourse and the media for about a century.

Former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo, speaking at a security and strategy conference hosted by the Netanya Academic College Tuesday, outlined a bleak vision for Israel's future unless the Palestinian issue is resolved. He blamed Israel for burying its head in the sand and ignoring an existential threat.

One can only wonder why he made this statement, as if there is one thing Israel's governments have focused on more than any other issue, it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This topic has also been the primary focus of public discourse and the media for about a century. Unlike the Jewish-Israeli side, the Arab-Palestinian side has never consented to declaring an end to the conflict and all demands, even if they were met in full.

I'm convinced that when it comes to daring Mossad operations, Pardo was able to think "outside the box," but when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict he mutters something about occupation, the demographic problem, and what kind of country we will bequeath our children.

Pardo spoke of the "occupation" in Judea and Samaria -- but Israel is no longer present in the Gaza Strip and it is still seen as an occupier. And what of Israeli Arabs? Does having the right to vote mitigate their "occupation"? The Arab sector's leadership does not accept their Israeli citizenship and strives to revoke Israel's Jewish nature. Do prisoners who have the right to vote for their wardens feel any freer?

...“When the rest of the world is told something is illegal in Jordan a discerning observer would understand that the people who run Jordan have decided that such and such is now illegal. What’s beyond doubt is that in 1995 Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the US and nothing changed between 1995 and 2017. They certainly don’t have a new constitution,”

The Jerusalem Post has a report today ["Jordan turns down US extradition request for Sbarro terrorist", March 21, 2017] written by Ben Lynfield on efforts to bring our daughter's murderer to justice. It includes a portion of an interview they did last night with Arnold Roth.

Extracts:

The ruling means that Tamimi will be able to continue her career as a television host admired for striking a devastating blow against the Israeli enemy rather than face trial and possible death penalty in the US. Tamimi caused the deaths of 15 civilians, including eight children and one pregnant woman and the wounding of 130 people. Two of the dead were US citizens...

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Trump Administration’s plan to slash funding for the State Department, so I’d like to offer my own modest proposal in that direction: Kill the department’s human rights bureau.

This isn’t because I think America shouldn’t care about human rights. On the contrary, I think it ought to shine a spotlight on the world’s worst abusers, given that the UN Human Rights Council and so-called human rights organizations fail to do so. But since the bureau, judging by its latest annual human rights report, does nothing but channel those institutions’ Israel obsession, I see no reason to waste taxpayer dollars on it.

Haaretz reporter Amir Tibon did a numerical analysis of the report earlier this month and discovered two astounding facts. First, the document “devotes 141 pages to the human rights situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, more than to any other country in the world except China,” which gets the same number. Second, “Even when viewed as two separate reports, the number of pages devoted to each of the areas–Israel and the occupied territories–surpasses that of any other country in the Middle East region.” For instance, Israel alone, excluding the territories, gets 69 pages; by comparison, Iran gets 48 and Syria 58.

Since a normal reader would assume the amount of space devoted to a country bears some relationship to the magnitude of its human rights offenses, any such reader would have to conclude that Israel is a far worse human rights violator than, say, Syria, where the government has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. It must certainly be worse than Iran, which has abetted that slaughter with both money and troops.

But the report becomes even more surreal when you start examining the “crimes” to which the State Department devoted all that ink. Take, for instance, the demolition of illegal construction in the Israeli Bedouin town of Umm al-Hiran.

We’ll leave aside the question of why demolishing illegal construction–with the approval of several courts, including the Supreme Court, and while offering the residents alternative land plus cash compensation–constitutes a human rights violation at all. It’s enough to consider a single sentence, which is based on a report by an Israeli NGO, the Negev Coexistence Forum: “The NCF reported that construction work on [the planned new town of] Hiran progressed and expanded during the year, reaching to within a few yards of Bedouin houses in Umm al-Hiran, and residents suffered from the dust raised by construction.”

Is this a joke? Or do State’s human rights gurus seriously think people suffering from the dust of nearby construction constitutes a human rights violation? By that logic, the only place anyone could build without violating human rights would be in wilderness areas. In other words, we’d essentially have to shut down all construction worldwide.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

...Daqamseh was able to kill those girls because we let down our guard. The only way to prevent that from happening again – writ large – is to reinforce that guard by reinforcing our control over eastern Israel. 23 years after the peace was signed, nothing has changed in the Kingdom of Jordan. No hearts and minds have been turned in our favor. The peace treaty has not protected us. The only thing that protects our children is our ability and willingness to use our weapons to protect them from our hate-drenched neighbors with whom we share treaties of peace.

Jordan is the country to Israel’s east with which Israel has had a formal peace for 23 years.

And its people hate Israel, and Jews, even more than the Iranians do.

Every once in a while, the Jordanian people are given a chance to express how they really feel about Israel. It’s ugly.

Twenty years ago, on March 13, 1997, 7th and 8th grade girls from the AMIT Fuerst junior high school for girls in Beit Shemesh packed box lunches and boarded a school bus that was to take them to the Jordan Valley for a class trip. The high point of the day was the scheduled visit to the so-called “Island of Peace.”

The area, adjacent to the Naharayim electricity station, encompasses lands Israel ceded to Jordan in the 1994 peace treaty and Jordan leased back to Israel for continued cultivation by the Jewish farmers from Ashdot Yaakov who had bought the lands and farmed them for decades.

Israel’s formal transfer of sovereignty – and Jordan’s recognition of Jewish land rights to the area – were emblematic of the notion that the peace treaty was more than a piece of paper. Here, officials boasted, at the Island of Peace, we saw on-the-ground proof that Jordan and Israel were now peaceful neighbors.

Just as Americans in California can spend a night at the bars in Tijuana and then sleep it off in their beds in San Diego, so, the thinking went, after three years of formal peace, Israeli schoolgirls could eat their box lunches in Jordan, at the Island of Peace, and be home in time for dinner in Beit Shemesh.

Shortly after they alighted their buses, that illusion came to a brutal end.

The children were massacred.

A Jordanian policeman named of Ahmad Daqamseh, who was supposed to be protecting them, instead opened fire with his automatic rifle.

He murdered seven girls and wounded six more.

On Jordanian territory, the guests of the kingdom, the girls had no one to protect them. Daqamseh would have kept on killing and wounding, but his weapon jammed.

In the days that followed, Israel saw two faces of Jordan and with them, the true nature of the peace it had achieved.

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About Me

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"